[HN Gopher] ChatGPT vs. Bard: A Realistic Comparison
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       ChatGPT vs. Bard: A Realistic Comparison
        
       Author : brianpk
       Score  : 49 points
       Date   : 2023-05-13 19:20 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.theapricot.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.theapricot.io)
        
       | marketingLizard wrote:
       | Bard's also not available in Canada yet! I feel a bit like a
       | broken record. But it's something a bit shocking and I believe
       | needs to be addressed. Why not google? What's the real answer?
        
         | siva7 wrote:
         | too strong consumer rights like in the eu
        
         | 8note wrote:
         | It likely can't respond with sufficient Canadian content to
         | please regulators
        
           | marketingLizard wrote:
           | I too have theories, but I'd like to hear the reason. If it
           | was the governments doing, Google can engage the Canadians to
           | help them. Given that they're silent on why, I am led to
           | believe it's Googles bottom line.
        
       | maxdo wrote:
       | i use them day to day last week for various matters. That
       | includes work, leisure, life. ChatGPT's $20 is a good deal, 1
       | month ago Bard was a junk right now it can be ok for many
       | reasons, I'd rate it as free GPT-3.5
        
       | magoghm wrote:
       | When you ask Bard "What do you know about Edgar Allan Poe?" it
       | answers "I'm a text-based AI and can't assist with that", some
       | people have managed to extract information about Edgar Allan Poe
       | from Bard but it does require some effort. With ChatGPT you just
       | need to ask the question to get information about Edgar Allan
       | Poe.
        
         | IanCal wrote:
         | The chat interface they give you gives back a big summary of
         | him with sources. Maybe the recent update helped.
        
           | magoghm wrote:
           | I don't know what chat interface you're talking about. What I
           | posted is the answer I get when I use
           | https://bard.google.com/
        
             | dgeiser13 wrote:
             | When I post in that same link I get a page of text about
             | Edgar Allen Poe.
             | 
             | "Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and
             | literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short
             | stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre.
             | He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in
             | the United States, and of American literature. He was one
             | of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story,
             | and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction
             | genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging
             | genre of science fiction.
             | 
             | Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809.
             | His parents, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, were
             | both actors. David Poe died when Edgar was only three years
             | old, and Elizabeth died two years later. Poe was then taken
             | in by John and Frances Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant
             | and his wife, who lived in Richmond, Virginia. Poe was
             | never formally adopted, but he was raised by the Allans as
             | their son.
             | 
             | Poe attended the University of Virginia for one year, but
             | he was expelled for gambling debts. He then joined the U.S.
             | Army under an assumed name, but he was discharged after
             | only two years. In 1835, Poe published his first book of
             | poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems. The book was not a
             | success, but it did attract the attention of some literary
             | critics.
             | 
             | In 1836, Poe married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia
             | Clemm. The couple had one child together, a daughter named
             | Virginia. Poe's wife died of tuberculosis in 1847, and her
             | death had a profound impact on him. He became increasingly
             | depressed and addicted to alcohol.
             | 
             | Poe died on October 7, 1849, at the age of 40. The cause of
             | his death is unknown, but it is believed that he may have
             | died of alcohol poisoning or a brain tumor.
             | 
             | Poe's work has had a lasting influence on American
             | literature and culture. His stories have been adapted into
             | numerous films and television shows, and his poems are
             | still widely read and studied. Poe is considered one of the
             | most important figures in the development of American
             | literature, and his work continues to inspire and entertain
             | readers around the world.
             | 
             | Here are some of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous works:
             | 
             | "The Raven" (1845) "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843) "The Fall
             | of the House of Usher" (1839) "The Murders in the Rue
             | Morgue" (1841) "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) "The
             | Masque of the Red Death" (1842) "The Cask of Amontillado"
             | (1846) "Annabel Lee" (1849) "Lenore" (1843) "Ulalume"
             | (1847) Poe's work has been praised for its dark and macabre
             | themes, its use of suspense and horror, and its vivid
             | imagery. He is considered one of the most important figures
             | in the development of American literature, and his work
             | continues to inspire and entertain readers around the
             | world."
        
               | magoghm wrote:
               | I just tried again using a different computer and I still
               | get the answer " I'm a text-based AI and can't assist
               | with that."
        
               | magoghm wrote:
               | That first paragraph is almost a word by word copy of
               | this the Wikipedia entry about Edgar Allan Poe:
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
               | 
               | edit: sorry if it seemed like I claimed I didn't believe
               | you. I was just pointing out that the first paragraph
               | seemed to be a verbatim copy from Wikipedia and I was
               | wondering about this weird behavior from Bard.
        
               | dgeiser13 wrote:
               | I am just telling you what happened when I posted "What
               | do you know about Edgar Allan Poe?" in Bard. You can
               | believe me or not.
        
       | dvt wrote:
       | I wish this kind of low-effort lazy AI "content" would stop
       | making it to the top of HN day after day. In any case, the piece
       | is clearly an ad for Apricot. The examples cited in the article
       | are so pedestrian, it's hardly even worth discussing.
       | 
       | How can you even seriously think that asking GPT for a function
       | that parses OPML is a "realistic" task. I can just Google it and
       | get like 100 pages of Python functions that do exactly that.
        
         | OkGoDoIt wrote:
         | Personally I found the comparison useful and relatable. I could
         | imagine wanting to accomplish these exact same tasks and
         | wanting to know which language model would be best. And in
         | general I like this qualitative analysis rather than the
         | metrics we get in official releases and research papers which
         | often don't capture real world use very well. I can't exactly
         | begrudge the author for killing two birds with one stone here,
         | it's better than some completely made up use case that's
         | completely theoretical.
        
       | brianpk wrote:
       | ok, the title should probably be more like "One person's
       | anecdotal, totally unscientific but realistic comparison. Still,
       | amidst all the breathless hype, I thought a little actual data
       | might help people evaluate the two tools side by side.
        
         | jimsimmons wrote:
         | You are the author so can change the title?
         | 
         | You can't have the cake and eat it too
        
         | burlesona wrote:
         | Good write up, I appreciate the humility about what it is and
         | isn't. Cheers!
        
       | moffkalast wrote:
       | > OK, this is not the biggest thing, but why on earth does Bard
       | use indentation with 2 spaces instead of the standard 4? This
       | drove me up the wall, so I tried all sorts of prompts to get Bard
       | to use indentation with 4 spaces but they all failed.
       | 
       | This is also interesting with GPT-4. I've been using it to
       | generate tons of code and sometimes it indents by 2 spaces,
       | sometimes it mimics what I give it first, but often times to
       | reverts to 2 spaces regardless even if told to explicitly indent
       | differently. Rather annoying indeed.
       | 
       | ChatGPT needs a plugin that automatically sends the output
       | through this site lol: https://www.browserling.com/tools/spaces-
       | to-tabs
        
         | OkGoDoIt wrote:
         | Two spaces is less tokens, might actually be a good thing
         | overall to limit token usage so you can fit more code in the
         | context window. It's easy enough to have your IDE convert it to
         | your preferred format after generation. But I am a diehard fan
         | of tabs over spaces, so I guess I'm used to converting
         | incorrectly formatted code anyway ;-)
        
         | circuit10 wrote:
         | You can just ask it to use your preferred indentation style.
         | Personally I prefer 2 spaces so even if 4 spaces is apparently
         | "standard" I'd like it to use 2
        
           | moffkalast wrote:
           | That's what I'm saying, it always eventually relapses back
           | even if you do, sometimes even after a single reply. Makes
           | more sense to just postprocess it afterwards immediately.
        
       | jsnell wrote:
       | The construction of the summarizing task is a bit odd. The prompt
       | asks for a single sentence of output, but then the author
       | complains that the Bard output is too terse. If I'm asking for a
       | single sentence, that's about the amount of text I'd expect, not
       | a paragraph of text mushed into a run-on sentence.
       | 
       | Especially if the problem is something as easily fixable as the
       | wrong level of detail, I would have thought that exploring some
       | alternative prompts would make sense. Given this is the prompt
       | that the author is already using for a ChatGPT-based app, it's
       | obvious that this specific prompt would work well there. If it
       | didn't, they would have iterated on the prompt until it produced
       | acceptable results for their app.
        
       | fnordpiglet wrote:
       | I've been comparing bard and ChatGPT in most my tasks since bards
       | release. Bard is infuriating. It claims it can't answer most
       | things, although if I prompt tweak things it'll eventually
       | answer. It has _terrible_ contextual awareness - it literally
       | can't piece a thread between one prompt and the next - each
       | prompt is self contained as far as I can tell. There's no history
       | of prior discussions other than in Google activity, but you can't
       | resume those. In theory they all form a continuum, but I don't
       | really want that - I want the context from one session to be
       | distinct from the other.
       | 
       | I don't think ChatGPT is a particularly amazing interface or
       | experience. But Bard is so far off the mark it makes me realize
       | Google still won't be able to make a product. LLM as they mature
       | and integrate into a better ecosystem of feedback mechanisms and
       | interfaces will eat Google's search business alive, and I see no
       | indications they can do anything about that.
        
         | magoghm wrote:
         | From what I've seen, Bard often gives great answers but
         | sometimes it can't answer even very simple questions.
        
           | fnordpiglet wrote:
           | Yeah when it answers they're good answers, and more up to
           | date. But it's so difficult to interact with any value is
           | lost.
        
       | cardosof wrote:
       | As a customer, I want the best product, not the best LLM. The
       | race is far from over and it's not just about having the biggest
       | model in the room.
        
         | drcode wrote:
         | literally all I want is the best llm
        
           | pryelluw wrote:
           | Not being pedantic but genuinely curious as to how you would
           | define or measure "best"?
           | 
           | I can imagine some kind of multipoint benchmarking in the
           | near future. What do you think?
        
             | amf12 wrote:
             | Moreso, best is really a matter of perspective.
             | 
             | For some questions I asked, I liked Bards response, for
             | some others I liked ChatGPT. Moreover, Bard is much newer
             | vs ChatGPT had a lot of fine-tuning data from being used
             | for a while now.
             | 
             | The "best" will change over time, and will depend on ease
             | of use, speed, availability, how close they are, rather
             | than just the "best response" to more types of questions.
             | 
             | A Chat app that is good enough, but with better
             | integrations, enterprise support will be used by
             | enterprises. Just like why Meet and Teams gained userbase
             | over Zoom, even though they came in the game late.
        
       | npilk wrote:
       | Good summary and test cases. Not too surprised to see the result
       | - I feel most commentators have preferred ChatGPT to Bard. In
       | fact, on Bard's initial launch, I remember a lot of discussion
       | expressing surprise that Google was as far behind as it seemed.
       | Maybe there is more hype for Bard in other circles than mine?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Geee wrote:
         | They updated it a couple of days ago to their newest PaLM 2
         | model, so it's better now than it used to be.
        
       | franze wrote:
       | yesterday I coded qrpwd - a command line tool to password protect
       | information in a QR code (as a backup for my 2 factor auth backup
       | codes). https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/qrpwd
       | 
       | i say coded, i mean, i directed chatgpt to do it
       | 
       | chatgpt had some issues with the QR content extraction using
       | zxing so I tried Bard.
       | 
       | Bard destroyed totally working code again and again while
       | ignoring the issue on hand.
       | 
       | In the end I googled some stackoverflow posts with working code,
       | fed them to chatgpt and it worked it out.
       | 
       | In my experience, BARD is not up to any coding tasks, while
       | chatgpt - while not perfect - is magic.
        
         | dgeiser13 wrote:
         | Bart?
        
           | franze wrote:
           | thx, fixed
        
       | zmmmmm wrote:
       | > Yes, Bard can get yesterday's stock returns, but so can Yahoo
       | Finance
       | 
       | Off putting when the author puts down a significant and
       | fundamental improvement (having up to date information instead of
       | point in time snapshot) with such a remark that so completely
       | misses the point.
        
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       (page generated 2023-05-13 23:02 UTC)